Introduction to Russia and Eurasia

The territory of Northern Eurasia (roughly Macro-Russia, the Commonwealth
of Independent States [CIS], or the former USSR) covers more than
one-sixth of the earth's land surface. Much of it is blanketed by
seemingly endless forest. It is inhabited by people speaking over one
hundred languages and constitutes the third most populous geopolitical
entity in the world. It extends from the Arctic Sea to the deserts of
Turkestan and includes maximum and minimum degrees of temperature,
elevation, precipitation, wind, land and mineral resources, and
ecological, cultural, and linguistic variation.

The cultures of this huge area may be divided roughly into four parts that
overlap—for example, the Jews and Gypsies, each with significant
subcultural variation, range from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean. The
four major culture areas are: European Russia, with its Slavic,
particularly Great Russian, majority and many Tatar and Uralic minorities;
Central Asia, with its predominantly Turkic, Muslim peoples, notably the
Kazakhs and the Uzbeks, spread over vast steppes and desert ranges;
Siberia, with its many small indigenous groups such as the northernmost
Nganasan and a huge Russian (Siberiaki) majority mainly in the cities from
the Urals to Vladivostok; and the Caucasus, where the density and
multiplicity of cultures (e.g., Daghestan is known as "the Mountain
of Languages") coexists with many shared patterns and traits.

In terms of more analytical dimensions, northern Eurasia includes at least
three kinds of cultural entities (if by "culture" we mean a
broad constellation of ecological, economic, social, and religious
factors) : ancient and self-conscious peoples with a complex class
structure, a literary tradition, and a developed economy, of which
Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Tajikistan, and Russia proper are
good examples; relatively large ethnic groups with much historical
identity that have or have had considerable political standing such as in
the Baltic states, the Udmurt and other Finno-Ugric groups near the Volga,
the Tuvans, and Yakut (Sakha) ; and relatively small groups—such as
the Even, Gagauz, and the peoples of Daghestan—often tribally
organized, in some cases shamanic in religion, that in recent times have
been politically subjugated to a degree; some, like the Kalmyks, have been
pushed toward oblivion, and others, like the Yukagir, into it.

(1)
European Russia,
occupied mainly by Slavs, runs from the Baltic Sea and the Polish border
east to the Ural Mountains and from the White Sea south to the Black Sea,
the southern Russian steppe, and the Caucasus. It is basically a vast
plain interrupted by rivers, lakes, and ranges of hills and ravines. The
three main subdivisions of the East Slavs—the Russians proper, the
Ukrainians, and the Belarussians—although differing significantly
from each other, also share many basic cultural patterns such as reliance
on grains in the diet, the importance of the somewhat extended nuclear
family, the steam-bath complex, long and elaborate weddings, a village
commune (
mir
) tradition, and certain annual holidays that have carried over from
earlier times, notably Easter and Christmas.

Over half the East Slavs live in villages, but about two-thirds of the 150
million Russians proper or "Great Russians" are urban. This
urban population shares certain patterns. The majority now live in large,
crowded, dilapidated apartment houses and work in foundering, inefficient
factories or service trades while being imperfectly assisted by public
health and social security amid an unending sequence of shortages,
inflation, and breakdowns of transportation, heating, and food delivery.
Nonetheless, some aspects of urban culture preserve earlier (even czarist)
levels of quality, notably education in mathematics and certain arts
(ballet and poetry). Urban life is made more feasible by dense personal
networks (often by phone), by patterns of informal exchange (often by
barter), and by traditions shared with the village such as the local
steambath. There is a remarkable similarity, incidentally, between urban
apartments and the interiors of rural dwellings. There are, moreover,
long-standing, strong, and continuing traditions of peasants working in
the cities, of wealthier city folk having country cottages and cabins, and
of all social classes maintaining familial and other personal ties with
the countryside. Additional processes of ruralization today are resulting
in the migration of city dwellers (especially Russians from non-Russian
states) to villages and a large increase in truck farming (family plots)
near cities.

The Russian area is conveniently and realistically subdivided into three
parts: the southern "black earth" zone, with large villages
and the raising of many kinds of grains in fairly open country; the
central "industrial" zone of rolling fields, low hills, and
groves, with its mix of diversified agriculture (e.g., dairy and truck
farming), local arts and crafts, and many heavily industrialized cities
and their huge sectors of skilled and semiskilled workers, intellectuals,
and bureaucrats; and the large northern and northeastern zone, with many
lakes, streams, and rivers, extensive forests (mainly of birches and
conifers), and small villages, typically with large homesteads—in
the northeast there is also much lumbering, mining,
and some heavy industry. Well over half the Great Russian population is
nominally Russian Orthodox and probably a larger proportion believe in
spirits of various kinds (e.g., house spirits, forest spirits, river
nymphs, etc.) in a system of partly pagan beliefs that is strongly
supported by folklore (e.g., proverbs, sayings). Kinship networks, village
communal Organization, and a bureaucracy (although the latter is
inefficient) help to maintain a semblance of social order.

There are two other major East Slavic groups. Ukraine has a population of
51 million, of which 37 million are actually Ukrainian. It is the
breadbasket of the Slavic area and produces wheat, maize, and other
cereals in prodigious quantities; half the Ukrainian population,
concomitantly, still consists of peasants who live in villages of 1000 to
5000 in population that are laid out in cluster, chain, ribbon, or grid
patterns. The great cultural center of Kiev, with its many legendary
bells, rivals the northern capitals of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Many
western Ukrainians belong to the Uniate church. The black-soil plains and
steppes, as in Russia, are crosscut by large rivers, notably the Volga,
the Dnieper, and the Bug, all critical for transportation. Farther to the
west the much smaller Belarussian population of about 8 million, much of
it heavily Russified, lives in an industrialized, urban environment, in
cities such as Minsk, or in a countryside that is often marshy and
low-lying. Here are Belarussian peasants in their small villages of 5 to
100 households, each typically consisting, as among the other Slavs, of a
dwelling, a granary, a feed barn, a livestock barn, and a cold cellar.
Fishing is important in the north, as it is among the northern Great
Russians.

Elements of chauvinism notwithstanding, the culture of the East Slavs is
highly syncretistic, involving native Slavic, Finno-Ugric, Turko-Tatar,
Mongol, Greek (e.g., Byzantine), western European, and, most recently,
American components.

In cultural terms the East Slavic mass includes all its outliers and
diaspora in neighboring states and regions, where they often form large
minorities (e.g., one-third the population of Estonia and a large fraction
of that of northern Kazakhstan). The Siberian Russians (and Ukrainians)
are scattered across a continent to the east although centered in western
Siberia, notably in Kurgan and near the coal mines of Novosibirsk. Despite
their distinctiveness—their character as
"Siberiaki"—they are more Russian (or Ukrainian) than
anything else in language and customs. To the south and southeast are
several groups of Cossacks such as the Don Cossacks of the Don River area,
who, while retaining associations with cavalry and choruses, are today
grain farmers, miners, and members of the intelligentsia.

Within, among, and adjoining the East Slavs, there are many minorities.
The Tatars include the now partly repatriated Crimean Tatars and the Volga
Tatars with their great cultural heritage and intense national
consciousness (which includes a reformist Islamic revival). Several
Finno-Ugric groups are dispersed in the central Volga area, often not far
from the river itself. The Udmurt, the Mordvinians, and, more to the
northeast, the Komi, although heavily Russified, are tending more and more
to revitalize and restore their indigenous cultures. Between Ukraine and
Romania are found the Romanian-speaking Moldovans, and, within Moldova,
almost a quarter million (Orthodox Christian) Gagauz Turks. Despite
problems of classification, cross-reference, and marginality, the area we
are calling European Russia, including its minorities, is integrated in
many critical ways by culture, politics, economy, and a shared history,
and it is demarcated by bodies of water, the Urals and the boundaries of
neighboring states. The Baltic groups constitute the exception: the
Estonians, Karelians, Latvians, and Lithuanians, although influenced by
Russia's traditions and political economy, are primarily associated
with western Europe and are relatively marginal to the area in question in
terms of culture and political attitudes (e.g., the Lithuanians are Roman
Catholic, the Latvians Lutheran).

The mosaic and synthesis of cultures today reflects a long and tragic
history—from primeval beginnings of dispersed hunters and fishermen
intermingling with Finnic peoples, to the gradual emergence of Slavic
polities, to conquest by the Varangians (Vikings) in the ninth century, to
conversion to Christianity under Vladimir (988) with subsequent Byzantine
influence, to the emergence of the mainly southern principalities of
today's Ukraine, to the often genocidal conquest by the Mongols
(thirteenth century), to the rise in the Middle Ages of the Muscovite
State in the north (notably under Ivan III and Ivan the Terrible), to the
rapid imperial expansion and explosive economic growth during the
eighteenth century, to the high culture and world-power status of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to the First World War and the Russian
Revolution, and then the Soviet period, the Second World War, and finally
the chaos and regeneration of
perestroika.
Throughout these years the boundaries often shifted but the basic process
was imperial expansion at the cost of Turk, Pole, Tatar, and Siberian
native; the colonial exploitation of subject peoples such as the Volga
area Finno-Ugric groups; and the creation of culturally and politically
defined national entities, particularly of Russia and, later, of Ukraine
and Belarus.

(2) The
Caucasus,
occupying the south-central portion of the area, runs from the southern
Russian steppe to the borders of Iran and from the Black to the Caspian
seas. Apart from some tropical coastal areas in the west and parching
deserts in the northeast and flatlands here and there, this is largely a
region of mountains (including some of the highest in the world) and of
lush, fruit-tree-filled valleys.

The Caucasus may be discussed in terms of five cultural classifications:
Georgia, in the west, with at least seven Georgian subdivisions, all of
them Georgian Orthodox in faith (except the partly Islamic Ajarians and
the non-Georgian Abkhazians), an ancient, high cultural tradition, a
complex and diverse economy, and a strong national polity over a thousand
years old; Armenia, in the south-central Caucasus, with Eastern and
Western subdivisions, also with an ancient high culture, a national
(Monophysite) church, a sense of identity as a nation-state, and large
numbers in diaspora; Azerbaijan, in the east, Turkic-speaking and mostly
Shiite Muslim, with a complex economy in which the oil industry
predominates; the Northern Caucasus, roughly north of the Caucasus
mountain range, ranging from the Circassians, some of them near the Black
Sea, to the Chechen and Ingush in the center, to the Avars near the
Caspian Sea; and the Daghestan area that contains over fifty distinct
groups, some of them small, occupying a single valley, others, notably the
Avars, numbering in the tens or hundreds of thousands and having a strong
sense of history, a high rate of literacy, and a complex social structure.

In terms of history and prehistory, by the end of the Stone Age the three
main indigenous groups may well have been in place: the Northwest
Caucasian or Abkhaz-Adyghe peoples occupying an area from the Black Sea to
the Sea of Azov and inland to the Kuban River; the Northeast or
Nakh-Daghestanian peoples living in an area extending from somewhere north
of the Terek River south along the Caspian Sea into what is now
Azerbaijan; and the South Caucasian or Kartvelian peoples in what is now
Georgia and some adjoining areas, particularly Turkey. Some or all of
these regions were successively subjugated or at least influenced by the
Greeks under Alexander (fourth century
B.C.
) and, later, by Byzantine Greece (c. sixth century
A.D.
); the Persians (e.g., the Sassanids [third to seventh centuries]); the
Arabs and the Muslim expansion (mainly in the seventh and eighth
centuries); the Mongols (thirteenth century); then Tamerlane (fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries); the Ottoman Turks; and, finally, the Russians
(starting mainly in the eighteenth century). At present the Caucasus is
being drawn in conflicting directions toward the Russians to the north,
Europe to the west, and the Turkic and Muslim worlds to the south.

Linguistically, the North Caucasian languages are usually divided into the
Northwest, the North Central, and the Northeast (e.g., the
Chechen-Ingush); according to some views, they are related to each other,
but, according to other views, even the Northeastern group may not
constitute a family; according to yet other theories, the North Caucasian
languages as a set may have been related to Proto-Indo-European.
Indo-European-language speakers on the scene today include the Armenians,
who, by one hypothesis, occupy the original Indo-European homeland area,
and the Iranian Ossetes in the northern mountains. There are some
half-dozen Turkic languages such as Kumyk in the northeast corner of the
area and Azerbaijani, the language spoken by the largest Turkic group in
the Caucasus; some form of Turkic (or "Tatar") serves as a
lingua franca in much of the area, particularly Daghestan. The dominant or
characteristic linguistic fact is the great diversity, ranging from
Georgia, where eight or more dialects of Georgian are spoken, to
Daghestan, which, although about the size of Illinois, contains groups
speaking over thirty distinct languages and a vastly greater number of
dialects. The Caucasus displays far more linguistic diversity than all of
western Europe.

Despite the overt fact of cultural and, in particular, linguistic
heterogeneity, various large subsets of the cultures of the Caucasus share
a number of patterns, some of them worth itemizing here: a large porch as
the locus for many family activities; centering the home on a cooking pot
suspended on a chain over the central hearth, and/or the pattern of a
decorated pole in the center of the main room; national foods made of
grains and milk or meat (for example,
khinkal
—spiced meat in a dough pouch) ; men's fur caps, several
typical jackets and coats, daggers, and women's complex jewelry and
many-storied headgear; marked segregation and division of labor between
the sexes; variously compacted villages (e.g., the "beehive
model") ; patrilocal and patriarchal family organization combined
with strict taboos for the in-marrying woman; extraordinarily developed
patterns of ritual kinship and of hospitality; kissing or at least
touching the breast of an unrelated woman in order to be accepted into her
clan as an honorary member (resorted to in some communities to end a
feud); clan (
tukhum
) endogamy in Daghestan but exogamy elsewhere. Although there are large
modern cities such as Makhachkala, Baku, Erevan, and Tbilisi, most people
live in regional centers and mountain hamlets.

In terms of religion the Caucasus includes a remarkably vital substratum
of indigenous (pagan) practices including, variously, animal sacrifice,
shamanism, and rainmaking ceremonies. Islam brought with it Sharia (the
code of Islamic law), which now complements the traditional
adat
(customary norms) of the northern Caucasus and Daghestan, various
elements from Christianity, and, of course, the secular laws.

(3)
Central Asia
occupies the vast expanses that extend from the southern Russian steppe
and the Caspian Sea eastward to and into the Altai Mountains and the
Pamirs and from southern Siberia south to the borders of Iran,
Afghanistan, and China. There are hilly or low mountainous areas in the
core, as in Kazakhstan, and true mountains on the eastern peripheries;
most of Tajikistan consists of mountains and narrow valleys. But much of
this is a flatland consisting of treeless steppes and deserts that are
marked by frequent dust- and sandstorms and continental extremes of cold
and heat (up to 50° C in the Kara Kum) and of aridity and
drought—the latter reaching ecologically disastrous proportions as
in the partial dessication of the Aral Sea. In such an environment, the
great rivers of the Amu Darya, Syr Darya, and Hi, serving as linear oases,
have played a crucial role (e.g., in the Ferghana Valley).

The population of what used to be Russian Central Asia now exceeds 50
million. In some of the former republics, such as Kazakhstan, the
eponymous Turkic peoples actually constitute less than half of the
population, but these groups have been growing explosively in recent
decades, often creating severe social problems of unemployment, ethnic
conflict, and the like. The entire region can be subdivided into six
parts: Turkmenistan in the southwest corner around the Kara Kum Desert
(population about 3 million, almost all Turkmens); Uzbekistan, with
200,000 Uigur in its south-central zone, 400,000 Karakalpaks around the
Red and Black deserts, and some 14 million Uzbeks in a polity of 19
million—the Uzbeks are thus the most numerous Turkic group in
Northern Eurasia; Kazakhstan, spread all across the north and center
(about 5 million Kazakhs within a population of 15 million); Kyrgyzstan in
the southeastern corner (almost 2 million Kyrgyz within a population of 4
million) ; also in the southeast, the non-Turkic Tajiks, who are Iranian
(about 3 million) ; yet farther east, the likewise Iranian Pamir peoples
on the "Rooftop of the World"; the Pamir Mountains are also
home to the Ichkilik (or Pamir-Kyrgyz) Turks, and there are other
minorities in Russian Central Asia as a whole (e.g., the Shiite Ironis
descended from Iranian slaves). There are many millions of Russians and
tens of thousands of other minorities (e.g., Germans, Siberian
Estonians)—who have been rapidly leaving Central Asia for their own
titular regions since about 1985.

All the major eponymous groups are Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi rite,
observing such major holidays as Ramadan and the Korban (the great
sacrifice of Abraham) and often visiting Muslim holy places or belonging
to Sufi brotherhoods (
tariqa
) or localized semi-Muslim burial shrines. The principal exceptions are
the Pamir peoples, most of whom are Ismailis of the Nizarot rite
(followers of the Aga Khan), the Bukharan Jews, and the Russians and
Ukrainians. A strong attachment to traditional Islamic values is
exemplified variously:
by the early marriages of girls, by respect for elders, and by the
importance of the Quran. Today the rapid breakdown of Muslim values in
some quarters is competing with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, which
seeks to revitalize or even exaggerate these same values: many consider
themselves members of the Islamic community, the
umma,
without being either fundamentalist or particularly observant. Speaking
more generally, Central Asian religions still bear the mark of pre-Islamic
practices contributed by ancient Iranian and Mesopotamian religions, such
as Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Gnosticism, and Nestorian Christianity,
not to mention the shamanism indigenous to Siberia and Central Asia. In
Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan Islam grew to prominence only in the eighteenth
to nineteenth centuries, roughly corresponding to Muslim missionizing
promoted by the Russians via the Tatars.

Russian Central Asia is dominated symbolically by Speakers of Turkic
dialects: those entering into the (relatively artificial) divisions of
Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Karakalpak; the Turkmen dialects (close to Azeri) ;
and the Uzbek and Uigur languages; the three belonging, respectively, to
the Kipchak, Oguz, and Chagatay branches of the Ural-Altaic Language
Family. Almost all (96 percent to 99 percent) of these Turkic peoples
classified their languages as primary (as against Russian). The writing
systems, after a switch from the Arabic script to the Latin (in the 1920s)
and to the Cyrillic (in the 1930s), today are reassuming Latin forms
(although some people are advocating the Arabic script). The languages are
the vehicles for a renowned oral (mainly epic) literature as well as, in
the case of Uigur, a sophisticated written tradition going back to the
Middle Ages. In addition to verbal arts, the Turkic peoples of Central
Asia, in particular the Uzbeks, have highly developed dance, theater,
classical music, and, especially among the Turkmen, a tradition of nearly
peerless carpet weaving.

The long history of this area may be summed up briefly as an early period
of indigenous and shamanic Tengri and Zoroastrian cultures, followed by
the Islamic conquests, then the Mongol invasions led by Chinggis (Genghis)
Khan and his successors (thirteenth century), the empire of Tamerlane
(fourteenth century, centered in Samarkand), then annexation by Russia
during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and, finally, the period
of Soviet domination beginning in 1919-1921. In the course of these
phases, local polities were overlaid with imperial power, followed by
combinations of fairly autonomous tribes with various khanates (e.g., of
Bukhara and Samarkand)—which were conquered by the Russians and
replaced by administration through regions and districts—often to
the extreme economic disadvantage of the colonized populations (a
situation that is changing rapidly today).

Central Asia as a whole was for a long time a region of mixed (semi-)
pastoralism characterized by transhumant patterns of (mobile) tent
dwelling combined with sedentary agricultural villages of orchards and
extended families living in clay or stucco houses built around courtyards
and surrounded by orchards. In the late 1920s and early 1930s the pastoral
side of society was assimilated to or converted into state-run villages
with catastrophic consequences (e.g., the death of millions of Kazakhs
through famine). Both types of society were ordered into larger clans or
tribes in terms of the patrilineal principle (typically reckoned as far as
seven or more generations). Sometimes, on an informal as well on an
administrative level, women took on a relatively greater role in family
decision making, especially in pastoral zones. For the most part, however,
particularly later in Central Asian history, Islamic values involving sex
roles eclipsed more egalitarian aspects of society.

The cultures of the region are known for a heavy reliance on mutton,
grain, and dairy products and a rigid sexual division of labor and spatial
segregation. In addition to intense and productive agriculture, notably in
the Ferghana Valley, cotton is raised on a massive scale using
"modern methods" such as chemical fertilizers with results
that, depending on the area, range toward outright ecological disaster.
Against the backdrop of former pastoralism, contemporary village
collectives, and mechanized agriculture, there stand the many-storied
cities with their complex economies and sophisticated urban ways: Bukhara,
Tashkent, and Samarkand, as well as relatively modern centers such as
Dushanbe. The gold mines of Uzbekistan rank among the richest in the
world.

(4)
Siberia,
occupying about 7.5 million square kilometers, from the Ural Mountains to
the Pacific Ocean and from the Arctic Sea to the borders of China and
Mongolia, contains a population of approximately 35 million divided into
forty or more ethnic groups (depending on one's criteria for
counting them) speaking dozens of distinct Uralic, Turko-Tatar, and
Paleosiberian languages and many more dialects—usually, today, with
Russian as a lingua franca of sorts. The age-old pattern of intermarriage
and genetic intermingling between these groups and other immigrants,
particularly Russians, is continuing today. Large populations, mainly
Slavic, are concentrated today in and around cities such as Omsk, Yakutsk,
and Vladivostok and in industrial and/or mining areas such as Krasnoyarsk,
in more or less urban (and often ecologically catastrophic) conditions.
But the basic and initial demographic profile of Siberia is of small
groups living in relatively simple conditions, thinly scattered and often
migrating over great spaces (most extremely, the Evenki with about 17,000
individuals scattered over an area larger than western Europe).

Geographically, Siberia consists of four main zones: treeless tundra along
and in from the Arctic coast; south of that a broad strip of taiga (mainly
coniferous forests mixed with birch, larch, and aspen); a more complex
landscape of steppe and hill country (e.g., the steppes of northern
Turkestan); and the regions of mountains sometimes rising to over 1.6
kilometers in elevation (where the Tofalar of the Sayan Mountains, the
Altai of the Altai Mountains, and the Tuvans of the Tuvan mountain range
live). Siberia is intersected by many great rivers, which, unlike most of
those of European Russia, run northward: the Ob, the Irtysh, the Yenisei,
the Lena, and others have always been vital for travel and transport (east
to west transport being served today in more southern areas by the
Trans-Siberian railroad). Most of Siberia is subject to extreme
cold—from -20° C in wintertime in many areas to world-record
lows of-90° C or more in the north—necessitating
extraordinary adaptive measures in clothing and housing, notably
many-layered fur garments, tents of hides, insulated log cabins, and
semisubterranean dwellings (which housed up to 100 persons among the
Itelmen of yore). Yet many parts of southern Siberia are temperate enough
to allow for prosperous agriculture, not only
truck gardens near the city, but, particularly in the southwest,
extensive dairy and wheat farming.

Until the sixteenth century the population of Siberia consisted mainly of
scores of indigenous groups ranging in size from a few hundred to several
tens of thousands, which lived in relative economic, political, and
cultural independence, traded ubiquitously, often mixed socially, and
sometimes warred with each other. Some regions were governed by local
khanates or similar polities. Between about 1500 and 1598 Siberia was
gradually conquered (mainly by Cossacks), secured by lines of forts, and
gradually colonized and exploited by Russian commercial and governmental
forces that exacted a tribute (
iasak
), usually in furs (often taking over existing tribute systems). During
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries southern Siberia witnessed
explosive industrial development, particularly of mines. Russian Siberia
evolved a distinctive character, which enabled a few larger groups such as
the Yakut and the Tatars to maintain some degree of economic and cultural
viability. Siberia was the scene of bitter and brutal civil war after the
1917 Revolution; it was first controlled by the Whites (notably the
Cossacks) and then taken by the Reds. From the 1920s to the 1970s Siberian
history combined sensational economic buildup (e.g., in industry, mining
and "virgin land" agriculture) with religious persecution,
cultural destruction, and ecological ruination. Since the middle 1980s the
area as a whole has been gripped by a new cultural and political
consciousness, exemplified by everything from refurbishing local
government to inviting Japanese and German capitalization of extractive
industries to the exporting of (brilliant) Yakut theater to Chicago.

Siberia today falls into roughly four ecocultural areas: western Siberia,
a lowland agricultural area where live the relatively Russified Nenets,
Komi, Mansi, and Khanty; southwestern Siberia, with its huge mining and
industrial complexes (e.g., around the Kuznetsk Basin), which attract some
indigenous people, including women; east-central Siberia, dominated by the
Buriats and Yakut but including many groups that are particularly
interesting and important in terms of comparative ethnography, such as the
Nganasan, the nothernmost people of Eurasia; and the Far East, with
peoples such as the Eskimos, Chuckchee, and Nivkh, living on or near the
Pacific Ocean or major rivers such as the Amur along the Chinese border.
They typically devote much time to fishing and sea-mammal hunting. The Far
East (Chukhotka, Kamchatka, and the Amur region), although included in
much of the above discussion as part of Siberia, is thought of as a
separate entity in many contexts; similarly, the Kazakhs and other peoples
of northern and eastern Kazakhstan, although included in the discussion of
Central Asia, are in many ways part of southwestern Siberia and are so
classified in Russian-area anthropology.

For centuries, but especially in the Stolypin era (1906-1911) and during
and after World War II, there has been migration, resettlement, and
deportation into Siberia. Immigrant minorities include the numerous
Siberian Germans, centered in Omsk, the well-organized and prosperous
Dungans (from China), and the Koreans. Generally, indigenous peoples
throughout Siberia still focus their livelihood on hunting, fishing,
trapping, reindeer breeding, cattle raising, and the production of
clothing. A few have low-status jobs in the cities or industrial
settlements; some individuals of indigenous origin, however, are today
leaders in politics, business, and the arts and sciences.

Despite its diversity and enormous spaces, the people of Siberia, or at
least large blocks of them, including the Russian Siberiaki, share some
values and characteristics such as physical and psychological adaptation
to cold, small or relatively small extended families organized into large
kinship networks, patrilineal organization (usually with clan exogamy),
and, notably among the immigrant Slavs, an open or frontier-town
mentality. Stereotypical of all Siberia was shamanism (the word
"shaman" comes, according to some scholars, from the Tungus
via Russian), shamans serving to protect group members from hostile
forces, make predictions, and mediate between the human and supernatural
worlds (e.g., as guides of the souls of the dead). Although devastated by
Soviet antireligious campaigns, shamanism has survived in many places and
today is experiencing a mixed revival—even a diffusion to the
Russians in northern and eastern Siberia. Having reviewed the cultures,
let us turn to a general, current problem.